Valuation of natural resources and environment has for years been the focus of environmental economics for its significance to sustainable development.During the past 40 years especially since 1984 when Haneman brought Random Utility Maximization theory into the contingent valuation method(CVM),this method has been rapidly developed and became a more and more state-of-the-art technique in the community of environment and resources valuation.However,CVM has introduced into China for only few years,and due to the lack of a complete principle framework,the domestic empirical studies are inevitably confronted with many puzzles and issues,and so developed slowly.This paper firstly chronologically reviews the main progress in the CVM study including both theoretical and empirical respects,the most famed international case studies were singled out and their importance are also pointed out one by one.Then,the domestic CVM cases up to date are summarized in three ways like natural resources protection,environmental quality improvement,and environmental pollution assessment.Based upon the principles for CVM constituted by some notable researchers and institutes,and according to some specific problems in the domestic environmental valuation practices,nine propositional principles are put forward for China CVM as follows,basic questionnaire design rules,socio-economic variables setting,valuation question format,payment vehicle and unit,sample size,pretest and survey process,data analysis and lastly cost benefit analysis,and special attention was taken for the valuation question,which is the core of the whole CVM study,we hold that single-bounded referendum question format should be accepted,in which ten bid amounts should be set with the maximum and minimum meeting the requirement that nearly 90% of all respondents accept or refuse the given amount.According to the above principles,some basic techniques used in the main steps in the China CVM empirical studies are discussed and criticized,and the findings reveal that some drawbacks especially like poor questionnaire design and pretest do exist in those studies,and methodical improvements must be made in the future.It is emphasized that the principles constituted in this paper may not meet the requirements of all studies and some revises must be made for a successful CVM study as this environmental and resources valuation method continuously develops in China.